❝ If you had to choose one state out of the 50 to use as a blueprint for America’s future growth plan, which state would you select?

Let’s add a wrinkle. There are two choices, Kansas or California…

Would you select the coastal tech and entertainment giant or the heartland agriculture and industrial producer?

❝ It’s a no-brainer. Kansas has been a disaster, with giant budget shortfalls, service cuts, slashed education budgets and a brain drain with young people leaving the state. The economy has failed to keep up with growth in the rest of the country and is much weaker in terms of job gains, wage increases and gross domestic product growth than neighboring states with similar economies. In 2015, for example, Kansas had one of the worst job growth rates in the country, at 0.8 percent, adding just 10,900 nonfarm jobs.

In the five years before Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, no state economy performed worse than Kansas. Things became so bad that Kansas decided to simply stop updating the public about state economic news…

The idiots’ delight